


Indentured Servant of the Ninth

by wvwv



Category: The Locked Tomb Trilogy | Gideon the Ninth Series - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: 5 Things, Canon-Typical Ableism, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:47:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25004908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wvwv/pseuds/wvwv
Summary: Five times Gideon was caught doing something she wasn't supposed to.
Relationships: Gideon Nav & Aiglamene, Gideon Nav & Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Gideon Nav/Harrowhark Nonagesimus
Comments: 34
Kudos: 88





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Set entirely pre-Gideon the Ninth.  
> Chapters will (hopefully) be posted every Tuesday as a little countdown to Harrow the Ninth, with part 5 going up on July 28, the week before the release date.
> 
> 2 things to note:  
> 1) I've mostly written this whole thing so I've tagged it for the whole thing. Aiglamene doesn't appear until chapter 2 and Harrow doesn't appear until chapter 3, but they will get here eventually.  
> 2) Since it's pre-GtN, the Gideon/Harrow is pretty antagonistic and mostly implied, but I figured I'd tag it anyway as they do have a lot of... suspicious undertones to their interactions lol
> 
> With all that said, onward to part 1! Set before Harrow's parents die.  
> 5 weeks until HtN!

When the shuttle arrived for the regular drop-off, Gideon was ready.

Gideon’s previous escape attempts had been the desperate scrambling of a baby, just flat out running to get away. She was older now, and she wasn’t dumb enough anymore to think that just running far enough would get her away from the Ninth House. To escape from here, she needed a shuttle.

Every couple of months, a shuttle from one of the other Houses would fly in with a huge load of junk for the Ninth. There were some nutritional supplements and medical supplies, but most of it consisted of material used to repair all the crap in the Ninth that was breaking down and falling apart.

If Gideon could just convince the shuttle pilot that everyone on the Ninth was awful, but Gideon was maybe a little less awful than they were, then maybe she would get to leave. She didn’t know where the other Houses were, or what they looked like, but she didn’t care. As long as she wound up off the Ninth, she’d be happy.

Drop-off days were always chaotic. Harrow, under the watchful eyes of her parents, would direct a bunch of skeletons to pick up the delivery boxes and transport them to one of the Ninth’s storage rooms. All the decrepit old nuns crawled out of their crypts to pray on their knees in a creepy cluster around them, and Marshal Crux marched around the landing bay looking for an excuse to yell at someone.

Gideon usually didn’t show up, or if she did, it was only to see if there was any interesting junk among the boxes, which there usually wasn’t. The Ninth House didn’t believe in things like entertainment or good food. They barely believed in food.

What this meant, was that no one would be keeping an eye out for her. When they didn’t expect her to cause trouble, Gideon was mostly ignored. It was really boring most of the time, but today it was convenient.

Hidden behind a wall of bustling skeletons, Gideon just walked right up to the shuttle. The pilot was leaning against the shuttle’s hull, watching the bony procession with a bored look on his face. He was wearing a bright red jacket that was probably the most colourful thing that had ever been on the Ninth House. He looked pretty old, to Gideon’s discerning gaze, but not as old as the nuns. Maybe like Ortus-old, but the pilot didn’t look as sad and wilted as Ortus did.

Step One of her brilliant plan accomplished, Gideon found herself floundering a bit at Step Two. What was she supposed to say to this guy to make him want to take her with him? The problem here was that there was absolutely jack on the Ninth House that anybody would want, ever. She couldn’t bribe him with anything, she just sort of had to hope that he would take pity on her.

“Hey, kid, should you be over here?”

Before Gideon could think of an opening line or a joke or something that would reel him in hook, line, and sinker, he beat her to the punch.

“Um, well, I shouldn’t _not_ be over here,” Gideon said, which was true. Technically, Gideon also wasn’t allowed to talk to outsiders, but if he spoke to her first, then it wasn’t even really her fault, probably.

The pilot snorted.

“Listen,” he began, but Gideon knew a dismissive tone when she heard one, so she cut him off before he could finish.

“Wait! You have to take me with you!” Well, that wasn’t exactly the slow, steady lead-up she’d envisioned when she came up with this plan, but it was too late now. “When you go back to… where did you come from?”

“The Second House,” the pilot said, pointing to the red coat he was wearing as if that should mean something to her.

Gideon nodded as if it did. “The Second House, then. You have to take me there.”

“Uh, well, I’m not really authorised to carry passengers—”

“It doesn’t matter! You have to take me with you! They’ll _kill_ me if you leave me here! The Ninth House is evil!” It occurred distantly to Gideon that this was probably why they didn’t want her talking to outsiders.

“Hey, take it easy there, kid. I really can’t take you with me, but…” the pilot said, and then held up a finger. “Here, how about this?”

The pilot reached back into the cockpit of his shuttle and shuffled around in it for a minute, before resurfacing with some kind of book or magazine in his hand. He held it in front of Gideon with the pointer finger and thumb of each hand, wiggling the rest of his fingers at her. The cover was mostly red and there was a drawing of a lady without a skull painted on her face, wearing a red and white uniform. She was standing on top of a spaceship and holding a shiny silver sword up in the air.

“Ta-dah! This is the fifth issue of _Amazing Adventures of Cohort Captain Deborah Diodus_. Sorry I don’t have the first ones with me. My nephew loves these comics—he must’ve forgotten this one when I let him sit in the cockpit before I came here.”

The pilot offered the comic to Gideon, and she took it, sliding her fingers over the shiny flimsy cover. She flipped through the pages. Each one was full of brightly coloured drawings, mostly of the same lady from the cover—Captain Deborah Diodus, presumably—doing cool stuff, like fighting aliens and flying spaceships and exploring foreign planets.

“You should keep it,” the pilot continued, making Gideon’s gaze jerk up from the comic to stare at him in astonishment. The pilot laughed. “I mean it. I can just get my nephew another copy of it. They’re made on the Second House, so they’re easy to come by.”

“Whoa… thank you,” Gideon said, immediately shoving the comic under her shirt to hide it from view, tucking the bottom of it into her pants. There was no way she was letting anyone from the Ninth get their hands on this.

“You know what the Cohort is?” the pilot asked.

Gideon shook her head no.

“It’s the Emperor’s army. Its base is located on my House—the Second—we’re the Emperor’s Strength and all.”

Gideon looked at the pilot’s red jacket with new eyes. She leaned forward eagerly. “Are you in the Cohort, too?”

The pilot laughed again. “Me? No, I just transport cargo. Not everyone from the Second House is in the Cohort… but, not everyone in the Cohort is from the Second House, either. Tell you what, I can’t take you with me now, but if you get older and you still don’t like it here, you can enlist in the Cohort, and you’ll be trained on the Second House and, then you could be assigned somewhere around the galaxy to fight for the Emperor.”

Gideon almost couldn’t believe that something so amazing could be true. She felt her eyes tearing up for some reason, though she was probably the least sad she’d ever been in her life.

“They really let you do that? Even if you’re from another House?” Gideon said.

“Yeah, sure. The Houses aren’t enemies, they’re allies—or, well, they’re supposed to be. We all serve the Emperor, and if you want to serve by fighting for him, then you can enlist,” the pilot said. “Although the minimum age of enlistment is around 12 or 13, and you don’t seem to be there yet, so you’ll have to wait a while, but the Cohort will still be there by then.”

Gideon was so starry-eyed, so buoyed by this shining new hope that she didn’t even care that the cargo pilot couldn’t take her with him today. She didn’t care when she heard the Reverend Father’s glacial voice snap out a command at Gideon to get away from the shuttle. She did care a bit when evil old Marshal Crux thumped over to her and nearly yanked her arm out of its socket dragging her away, shouting at her all the while.

Gideon snuck a little wave towards the shuttle pilot, who looked somewhat uncomfortable as he waved back. That was okay, people usually had that reaction to looking at Marshal Crux. He was probably taking her back to her cell, where she would be imprisoned for weeks with little to no food until she could convince them that she wouldn’t try to talk to anybody outside of the Ninth again.

Normally, Gideon would have resisted more, but today she was protecting something. If Marshal Crux discovered her prize, he’d likely kick the crap out of her and then do something terrible, like rip the comic to shreds in front of her. Or worse, leave it intact but give it to Harrow.

Besides, being locked in her cell would actually be useful. She’d have all the time in the world to read her new comic without having to avoid any judgmental, cataract-clouded eyes. And then when she was old enough, she’d be able to leave the Ninth House for good, leave to join the Cohort.

For as long as she could remember wanting anything, Gideon had wanted to escape the Ninth House just to be somewhere not there. Now, though, she finally had somewhere she wanted to escape _to_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 2! Aiglamene appears! This one's also set before Harrow's parents' deaths.
> 
> 4 weeks to go until HtN!

Gideon was totally going to get her ass kicked when they found her. She was supposed to be scrubbing the oss as if there weren’t a billion zillion skeletons running around that could do the job ten times better and faster than she could. She didn’t even really understand why a bunch of old bones even needed to be cleaned in the first place. Normally, she would have done what she’d been ordered to, if reluctantly and with a constant stream of loud complaints. But she just couldn’t right now.

Today was Gideon’s birthday. From her comics, she knew that other Houses celebrated the days of their members’ births, but nothing fun ever happened on the Ninth, so it was probably illegal or something. Not that Gideon would even really want to celebrate her birthday. She was always distracted on this day.

Gideon thought of her mother often, but it was never so difficult to ignore as it was on the anniversary of her own birth and her mother’s death.

She’d come down to where her mother fell, all those years ago, and sat down on the ground with a flashlight and a little pile of comics, so if anyone found her, she’d have the respectable excuse of shirking her responsibilities for entertainment.

Gideon pulled her most recent issue in front of her, _The Amazing Adventures of Cohort Captain Deborah Diodus_ #23. The Captain of the Ninth House Guard, Aiglamene had caught her rereading her original #5 issue once when she was supposed to be cleaning the altar. She’d genuinely thought she was going to be killed for that, especially when she saw the Reverend Mother and Father talking to each other in low, harsh voices. They both startled when they saw Gideon, but all they did was shoot her venomous looks. Instead, a few days after the next drop-off day (Gideon now spent the week surrounding the drop-off days locked in her cell so she couldn’t talk to shuttle pilots anymore. Slight overkill, if she were honest.), Captain Aiglamene had held out issue #1 in front of Gideon after unlocking her cell and told her that if she helped the skeletons with the leek field all day, then she could have it. If she didn’t help tend the fields, then Aiglamene would toss it in the garbage incinerator and make Gideon watch. Gideon helped with the fields.

Captain Aiglamene was alright, even if she shouted at Gideon a lot and looked like an old candle that had burned so long it was more lopsided melty-bits than actual candle.

Gideon flipped through the pages without really looking at them until she came to a two-page spread of Captain Diodus addressing a crowd of soldiers in uniform.

The age restrictions on enlistment didn’t stop Gideon from trying to escape to the Second House. They probably had other jobs she could do until she was old enough to join the Cohort. Gideon would clean a million Second House altars if it meant she got to be away from the Ninth House. And maybe they’d be so impressed with Gideon and her ability to survive such a terrible place that they’d let her enlist on the spot.

The only downside to her inevitable future with the Cohort was that she’d be abandoning her mother, sort of. Gideon wasn’t stupid, she knew that her mother was dead and not coming back. She knew it was pointless to have any sort of attachment to a patch of dirt that she’d landed on. But still, Gideon came here all the time.

She wondered if her mother would be proud of her for joining the Cohort. Did she know what the Cohort was? She must have. Maybe she was even one of the soldiers. Maybe she’d been on a mission for the Cohort before she’d had Gideon and didn’t have time to return home before Gideon was born.

Gideon didn’t even know if her name was supposed to be ‘Gideon’ or not. ‘Gideon’ might have been the person Gideon’s mother was trying to get to. ‘Gideon’ might be the name of Gideon’s father.

Or maybe, her mother hadn’t been heading _towards_ something, but away from it. Maybe ‘Gideon’ was the name of the person chasing her mother down. If that was the case, it was almost funny: her mother escaped being killed by ‘Gideon’ only to be killed by Gideon, when she was born too soon before they landed and sucked all the juice out of her mother’s haz suit.

Being born was simultaneously the worst thing that ever happened to Gideon and the worst thing that Gideon had ever done.

Gideon sighed and flipped the comic shut. She couldn’t even be bothered to pretend to read anymore. She tipped back until she was lying on the ground where her mother’s corpse had landed, cool sharp rocks digging into her skin.

A distant, sharp scrape along rock made Gideon jackknife upright. Time’s up.

Gideon fumbled for the flashlight on the ground next to her and twisted around to the winding path up the rock wall behind her to see who had caught her. _Please don’t be Crux, please don’t be Crux, please don’t be Crux…_

Uneven thumping signified Captain Aiglamene, and a second later Gideon’s flashlight beam found her ambling down to the bottom of the pit towards her.

“Get that damn light out of my eyes before I lock you in the Tomb!”

Yup, definitely Aiglamene.

Gideon pointed the light at Aiglamene’s feet instead, hoping to light her path. The slow drag of her prosthetic leg always made Gideon want to rush over to help her, but she knew better than to try. She’d just get her head bitten off for being a condescending brat or something. Unfortunately, this meant that she’d have to sit around and wait for a long damn time—all the better to wallow in her own impending doom—while Aiglamene carefully hobbled her way towards Gideon.

“This isn’t the oss,” Aiglamene said blandly.

Gideon cringed and avoided Aiglamene’s gaze.

“We both know you were supposed to be cleaning it today, and we both know the Reverend Mother and Reverend Father will be punishing you for not doing it, so I think we can skip that little chat. That’s not why I’m here.”

Gideon looked up, confused, but Aiglamene didn’t enlighten her, just continued her slow descent.

When she reached the bottom of the pit, Aiglamene detached something from her belt and threw it down in front of Gideon. It was some kind of small metal pipe or bar, which made no sense whatsoever.

“Uh… you missed me,” Gideon said, venturing a guess as to the bar’s purpose.

“If I was going to hit you, it would’ve hit, you mouthy brat,” Aiglamene grumbled. “Pick it up.”

Gideon picked the bar up, still no clearer as to what weird punishment this was supposed to be.

Aiglamene studied her in silence for a moment, then nodded decisively. “That looks like about the right size for a little half-pint like you. Let’s go.”

“What? Where? Why?” Gideon said, scrambling to gather her comics and flashlight anyway. “What even is this metal stick thing for, anyway?”

Aiglamene ignored her, turning back the way she came. “Come with me. I can’t see a goddamn thing down here,” she grumbled, which didn’t answer any of Gideon’s questions. 

Gideon helpfully pointed the flashlight at Aiglamene’s face.

“I spoke to the Reverend Mother and Reverend Father on your behalf,” Aiglamene continued, batting Gideon’s light away. “I told them that you’re completely useless at every task assigned to you.”

“Thanks… that’s so cool of you…” Gideon said.

“Quiet. Let me finish.” Aiglamene, with Gideon right on her heels, started back up the path she had just limped all the way down, which had to be a little disheartening. “You’re young, healthy, strong. You have no necromantic ability whatsoever, so there’s no point teaching you about that. You do a half-assed job whenever you’re supposed to clean anything, but you clearly have no shortage of energy. I’m going to teach to how to use a sword.”

Aiglamene continued talking, something about building up strength and learning the basics and waiting until she was sure Gideon wasn’t going to chop her own arm off accidentally, but Gideon didn’t take any of it in. Every image of Captain Diodus fighting with her sword, every tidbit about Matthias Nonius she’d heard from Ortus, every dream Gideon had ever had of defeating entire armies by herself to the cheers of the Cohort spun through her head at once.

She didn’t realize she’d stopped slowing her pace to match Aiglamene’s until she smacked right into her and dropped everything she’d been carrying. Aiglamene sighed.

“Clearly, we have a long way to go.” Aiglamene’s voice was reproving, but Gideon swore she looked amused as Gideon scampered around assembling all her scattered crap into a pile.

She was all business by the time Gideon stood back up. “This offer is conditional on a few things. One: You do what I say, when I say it. You’ll need to build up your strength and endurance and get the basics down with that bar as a practice sword. You won’t actually be holding a real sword for a long time. Two, you keep up with your other chores. They’ll be modified around my schedule for you, so you’ll likely be spending a bit less time scrubbing the oss, but you will still have to work. Three, no complaining. I think you’ll agree that this situation benefits you, so don’t make me regret sticking my neck out for you. Do you understand and agree to these conditions?”

“Yes,” Gideon said immediately. “Absolutely. I’ll do anything you want. Thank you, thank you, thank you! This is _so cool_! I can’t believe it!”

“I figured this would be a better use for all your destructive energy, and then we might actually get something useful out of you, if we’re miraculously lucky,” Aiglamene said. “Now, my first order is for you to report to the Reverend Mother and Father for your punishment in neglecting your duties.”

Gideon just barely bit back a complaint at that, managing to tamper her reaction down to just pulling a face.

“Once you’ve done that, report to me and we’ll begin your training,” Aiglamene said, and then, so gruffly that Gideon wasn’t sure she wasn’t reading too much into an extended cough, added, “Happy birthday, you pain in the ass.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 3! 3 weeks left!
> 
> Harrow appears at last!
> 
> From here on out, it's after the deaths of Harrow's parents. This one specifically is about a week after they die.

Gideon peered out from behind the corner of the hall, the sheath of her blunted old practice sword digging uncomfortably into her back. It was clear. Finally.

She was supposed to be running laps around the leek fields to build up her endurance and get used to moving with the weight of her new (well, 'new') heavier sword strapped to her back. She used to do the daily laps Aiglamene had ordered without question. She liked running laps, she found it almost relaxing, and she liked feeling like she was getting stronger. But for nearly a week she had been detouring down by the library. For the first few days, Crux had been guarding the door and Gideon had promptly run back up to the leek fields to finish her laps. No way in hell was she going to try and get past him.

Today, though, there was no one. Gideon figured that either he had something he had to do, or no one had come to bother Harrow (until now, at least), so they had deemed his presence unnecessary.

Either way, now was Gideon’s chance to do… something. Maybe.

Harrow hadn’t left the library since Gideon had gotten her parents killed. Harrow’s parents hadn’t left the freezer. Gideon knew that Harrow was studying up on something that could keep up the illusion that they were still alive, and she knew that there was a limited amount of time that the Reverend Mother and Father could be 'taking a vow of seclusion' before even all the senile old people in the Ninth House became suspicious. Still, Harrow had been working, probably non-stop—or as close as she could get to non-stop—and Gideon was… not _worried_ , but… 

Well, obviously, Harrow couldn’t be trusted to make reasonable decisions, hence busting into the Locked Tomb for her twisted idea of fun, so Gideon had to check to make sure she wasn’t going to, like, blow them all up or something.

Especially since this whole mess was Gideon’s fault.

Gideon tiptoed down the hall and gently eased the door open, holding her breath as if that would encourage the hinges to remain silent. She squeezed through as soon as she could fit, mindful of the sword tied across her back. Gideon crept through the narrow space between a pair of towering old bookshelves stuffed with all sorts of dusty books in various shades of black.

Gideon had been in the library before, but she wasn’t there often, and for good reason. The place was dim and creepy even by Ninth House standards and always smelt vaguely of rot. Most of the books were necromancy-related, so Gideon hadn’t been required to use it after it became clear that she was no necromancer.

Gideon did remember a creaky old table with hard uncomfortable chairs all shoved in a particularly dreary corner from when she’d been forced to read up on necromancy basics a million years ago to test if she had any abilities. As she got closer, she could hear the rustling of pages turning, so she stopped near the end of a bookshelf before the table came into view. She really hoped Harrow wasn’t facing this direction, because there would be no hiding her hair once she peeked around the shelf, even if Harrow was hyper-focused on reading and half-asleep besides.

Well, if she was doing this, she didn’t really have any other course of action. For what felt like the hundredth time that week, Gideon edged her face out from hiding, jaw clenched in anticipation of Harrow’s impending reproach.

Harrow didn’t see her. Her chair was facing another wall, and Harrow would only be able to see Gideon out of her peripheral vision or if she turned her head. Given that her nose was barely an inch from the massive book opened on the table in front of her, Gideon figured she was safe from that, for now at least. Gideon squinted at her, but between the bad angle and the skull face paint, Harrow mostly looked the same as usual as far as she could tell.

And Gideon blanked. All the burning purpose Gideon had felt in the days leading up to this moment vanished, and she was left wondering just what the hell she had expected to do here. There wasn’t anything she could say to Harrow to make up for what she’d done, and she couldn’t help her with turning her parents into corpse puppets, and Harrow probably wouldn’t even want to see her anyway, for good reason.

Gideon backed up a couple steps and then whipped around, forgetting that the sword stuck to her back also extended beyond her body. Its rusted metal-tipped sheath _thunked_ on a shelf and dragged against unfathomably old tomes as she turned, probably irreparably scoring their spines.

Gideon cringed at the answering scrape of chair legs. Sharp footsteps thundered across the floor towards Gideon.

“ _Griddle!_ ” Harrow snarled.

_Crap_.

Gideon turned back around, this time managing to avoid gouging any books, and held up her hands in vague surrender. She tried to contort her face into an apologetic smile, but she had no idea what expression she actually ended up with, because Harrow looked, if anything, even more livid.

“Look, I wasn’t trying to do anything, I was just…” Gideon had no idea what she was trying to do, honestly. Fortunately, Harrow wasn't interested in waiting for her response.

“You are not permitted to be in here. I am the sole head of the Ninth House now, and you do not go anywhere unless I specifically order you there. You should be _grateful_ to me for allowing the continuation of your pathetic existence, not sneaking around where you’re not wanted. Haven’t you done enough _sneaking around_ for one lifetime?”

Gideon winced. It was the most animated Gideon had ever seen her. Harrow’s chest was heaving so hard by the time she was finished that Gideon was genuinely concerned that she’d pass out.

Gideon tried to back off slowly, hands still held up as if to ward her off. “Look, you’re right, okay? I’ll just go. Sorry about scratching those books.” _Sorry about killing your parents_.

Harrow wasn’t content to let Gideon just slither away in shame. She had that look in her eyes, like a starving dog before a bone, that said she wasn’t going to let up. She reached into the recesses of her void-black robes, her hand coming up clutched around a fistful of small bones.

Gideon reeled around and made a mad dash for the library’s exit, reaching to pull the sword from across her back—as if that would do any good—even as she heard the clatter of a million tiny human remains across the floor behind her.

Gideon slapped the first grasping bony fingers away with her practice sword and was quickly forced to give up on escaping as she felt more hands catching on her clothes. She pivoted to face her assailants.

Gideon couldn’t count all the skeletons when they were all bunched up and crowded in the cramped little corridor between bookshelves. There couldn’t have been that many—there wasn’t the space for infinite skeletons, and Harrow was worn out besides. But it was hard to be hopeful of success when all she could see was a wall of bones all stretching up two heads taller than she was. Gideon could only hope to cause enough chaos in such close quarters that the skeletons began to impede each other, so that Gideon could slip away.

Gideon set her sights on precarious knee joints and dove in.

“If you want me to go,” Gideon huffed out, trying valiantly to stick to what Aiglamene taught her instead of just swinging the sword around wildly in a panic, “then why won’t you _let me leave?_ ”

Harrow didn’t reply, hopefully because she was over-exerting herself with all these skeletons, and not because she just didn’t give enough of a crap to answer.

Gideon almost froze mid-strike when she remembered that she’d come down in the first place to make sure Harrow was okay, and now here she was hoping Harrow would conveniently knock herself out. Way to go, Gideon. Way to go to Harrow as well, for not giving Gideon any other option. She certainly wasn’t going to just let Harrow kill her, whether it was justified or not.

Gideon’s hesitation cost her the fight. Harrow was relentless, piling skeletons all up in Gideon’s business, sending them clattering towards her even if they were missing jaws or arms or feet. Gideon managed to smash through the skeletons immediately surrounding her, but she quickly ran out of room to manoeuvre between cramped bookshelves. Gideon kept hold of her sword, but lost the ability to swing it as more skeletons piled in around her. A few surviving constructs forced Gideon to the ground and held her there no matter how much she tried to lash out.

At some unspoken command from their puppeteer, the skeletons shifted their grips on Gideon in creepy synchronicity, pulling Gideon up to her feet and propping her in place.

Harrow came to stand before her. There was blood dripping out of her nose and down over her bared teeth, and shiny wetness around her eyes that was probably more blood seeping out. As Gideon watched, Harrow pulled her gasping breaths back under control and warped her face into cold neutrality.

She regarded Gideon with an imperious little tilt to her head, like Gideon was beneath her, even though Gideon already had several inches on her.

“You will not go anywhere you are not supposed to be, as outlined by either myself, Marshal Crux, or Captain Aiglamene. Do you hear me?” Harrow said, in a voice that suggested that she'd never in her life felt an emotion other than contempt. Her ‘I am completely unaffected by everything and you are an insignificant flea’ schtick was sort of ruined by her tired bloodshot eyes, and the fact that her teeth were lined in red from how hard she’d pushed herself. Her hands were even trembling slightly.

She did not wait for Gideon to answer.

“You are a blight upon the Ninth House, a festering rot—" Clearly Harrow had been talking to Crux. "—and you don’t even have the intelligence to comprehend the magnitude of mercy we have bestowed upon you for even allowing you to live here.”

Gideon mostly tuned her out, still too conflicted to speak. She didn’t know if she wanted to defend herself, or try to maybe explain her actions, or keep fighting Harrow, or just tell her to shove off. Her body was buzzing with directionless adrenaline. She knew she’d taken some hard hits in the fight and her nose felt wet with what was probably blood, but she felt no pain, only anxious, frenetic tension.

Gideon dialed back into the tirade just in time for Harrow to end with: “Go crawl back to your cell before you get anyone _else_ killed.”

Gideon crawled back to her cell. She’d probably be completely screwed when Aiglamene realized that Gideon had skipped out on her laps—and then she’d be even more screwed when Aiglamene found out what she’d done instead—but Gideon couldn’t bring herself to care. All the energy had melted out of her muscles on her long walk back to her cell, and she was just sort of wrung out. When she returned to her cell, she threw her practice sword to the ground and collapsed miserably on her bed, where she stayed for the rest of the day, too wired to sleep but too tired to do anything else.

The next day, while doing extra laps Aiglamene had set to make up for the ones she missed, Gideon made her detour by the library, reflexive by now. She was unsurprised, but still weirdly disappointed to see that Harrow had constructed three skeletons to guard the door. Gideon turned back to the leek fields to finish her laps.

The day after, Harrow's parents were back, not quite good as new.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 4! 2 weeks until Harrow the Ninth!

“Pay attention to your surroundings, damnit!” Aiglamene hollered from the edge of the field, waving her sword around like a madwoman, which Gideon could see because she _was_ paying attention to her surroundings, damnit.

Gideon ducked a sword swung by a bony fist and bashed her own sword into another skeleton trying to sneak up behind her. She shattered its ribs and sent the rest of it clattering across the ground like a child spilling a box of toys. Mercifully, Harrow let it stay down. Or not so mercifully, as now Gideon was tripping on bone fragments every other step.

She had started by facing five sword-wielding skeletons, and Harrow had revived one every time Gideon knocked one to pieces. After battling skeletons for a sweat-soaked eternity, Aiglamene must have instructed Harrow to stop replacing her felled bone servants so they could finish. Now there were only two.

Aiglamene had gotten it into her head to recruit Harrow to help with Gideon’s training, presumably to torment Gideon. Training with Harrow always meant two things: an overabundance of judgy sneers, and an absolute plethora of bones. Today was no exception.

Gideon didn’t even see the point of this. If she were, say, fighting against a rebel base with the Cohort, she would be fighting other humans, not bone constructs. Skeletons were weaker and lighter than humans and, either because Harrow’s finer control over groups was limited or because her knowledge of sword fighting was abysmal, their movements were more or less random flailing. If anything, this was training Gideon for her daring escape from the Ninth rather than her future in the Cohort.

Gideon heaved her exhausted arms up over her head for a dramatic strike straight down on the last skeleton, which would have been hugely impressive if she hadn’t plunged her foot right into the gaping mouth of a discarded skull and thrown herself off balance.

Her sword, quickly followed by the rest of her body, smashed into the last construct, crumbling it to pieces. Gideon landed hard on top of a million jagged bone fragments, foot twisting sharply from where it was still tangled up in the broken jaw.

Gideon lay still for a moment, whole body buzzing from pain and exhaustion. She tested her ankle and then promptly stopped the hell out of that after a shooting spike of pain. It probably wasn’t broken, but it looked like her training would be a little lighter for the next couple of days.

A slow clap started up from the edge of the field.

“What a delightful demonstration of skill.” Harrow’s voice was bone dry and radiated smugness.

“I would like to state for the record that I won,” Gideon said, still lying face down on the ground. “I was the last one standing.”

“Do you listen to a single damn word I say to you, you bumbling moron?” Aiglamene lurched over to Gideon’s sad bone bed, Harrow drifting haughtily behind her. “ _Pay attention to your surroundings!_ That includes where your enemies have fallen and any other obstacles that might be on the ground around you! Watch where you’re putting your damn feet!”

With her audience hurling criticisms all the while, Gideon slowly teetered to her feet. Well, she teetered to one foot. She held the twisted one a little aloft to avoid putting weight on it, instead jabbing the tip of her sword into the ground and leaning on the hilt.

Aiglamene promptly held her hand out for Gideon’s sword. “Give me that before you break it, and go back to your cell for the rest of the day,” Aiglamene said. In a more respectful tone, she turned to Harrow and added, “My Lady, I know you’ve worked hard today, but could you make sure she actually makes it to her cell? I can’t lug her there myself. And if I may speak freely, I’d like for you to rest for the remainder of the day as well.”

Gideon looked at Harrow for the first time since her training began and saw the telltale dull ruddy cast of blood sweat marring the alabaster of her face paint.

Harrow stared hard at Aiglamene for some time, as if trying to come up with some excuse why she couldn’t help Gideon, before acquiescing with a sharp little nod. She pulled a knuckle out of her pocket and it sprung into a full skeleton just as it hit the ground.

The skeleton grabbed Gideon’s arm before she could protest and slung it around its shoulder.

“Uh, hang on a sec here, why is no one asking me about this? I can get to my cell myself, thanks!”

“Don’t overexert yourselves any further, just go straight there. Both of you. I’ll bring this to your cell after I’ve polished it,” Aiglamene said, waving Gideon’s sword at her, before turning and heading off in the direction of the Ninth House armoury.

“ _Hello?_ Is your hearing going, too?” Gideon called after her, and was soundly ignored. Rude.

“Stop wasting everyone’s time. Let me lock you in your cell and then we can all be free of you,” Harrow said, and set off to the staircase. The skeleton clinging to Gideon started moving after her, forcing Gideon to hop along with it or else risk further injury to her ankle.

“Hold up, there was nothing about ‘locking’ me in my cell!”

Harrow neglected to reply, setting a pretty punishing pace for someone escorting a person with an injured leg.

“I didn’t break your stupid rules, I’m injured. You can’t punish me for that,” Gideon said indignantly, ignoring Harrow ignoring her.

Harrow squinted back at Gideon over her shoulder. “You belong to the Ninth, Griddle, I can punish you whenever I like.”

Gideon couldn’t help but snort at that. “Gross!”

“Shut up, you degenerate.”

Harrow stalked off down the hall, apparently making the unilateral decision to end the conversation and completely blow off Gideon’s totally reasonable objections.

Gideon disregarded the sharp twinges in her ankle and levered herself after Harrow via skeleton, trying to catch up.

“Would you _slow down?_ You’re gonna injure me even more at this rate!”

Harrow snubbed her, surprise surprise, so Gideon stretched her arm out and yanked on her robes.

The skeletal hands supporting Gideon suddenly tightened painfully, trying to pull her away from Harrow.

“Hey, cut it out!” Gideon kicked out at Harrow with her good foot, trying to put all her weight on the skeleton and not her busted ankle. In retaliation, Harrow made the skeleton drop her.

Gideon couldn’t keep from crying out as her ankle was pulled in yet more exciting directions. She flung her arm out and grabbed Harrow’s ankle, intending to yank her to the ground as well. Harrow’s skeleton dove for Gideon’s arms.

“ _Hey!_ ”

Gideon, Harrow, and the skeleton froze, and slowly turned to look towards the end of the hallway at Aiglamene, like guilty misbehaving children... which they definitely weren’t. She must have cleaned Gideon’s sword already.

“What the hell do you two think you’re doing? You should both be resting.” Aiglamene looked like she wanted to be yelling at them, but the Reverend Daughter’s presence curbed her until she just sounded disapproving and brittle.

Harrow sniffed and brushed invisible dust off her robes. “Nav was picking fights and refusing to come along quietly, so I had to intervene.”

“‘Intervene’? You _dropped me on the ground!_ ”

Aiglamene heaved a sigh, rolling her eyes to regard the bioluminescent powder coating the ceiling. “Alright, enough. Please pick Nav back up and take her the rest of the way, my lady.”

Aiglamene accompanied them like a wearied babysitter for the entire silent trip to Gideon’s cell, shooting them dry looks when they pulled faces at each other. Well, Gideon pulled faces. Harrow stuck her nose in the air as if facial expressions were beneath her.

Harrow sent the skeleton off at the doorway of her cell, so Gideon had to use her sheathed sword as a crutch to get to her bed. Gideon sat down heavily on the edge and placed her sword gently next to her. Aiglamene glared at her until she gave in and lay down.

“Now I don’t want to see or hear you until tomorrow at the earliest,” Aiglamene said, and then motioned for Harrow to shut the door.

Seconds later, Gideon heard the familiar scrape of a key and click of the door locking.

“Wait, _what the hell?!_ ”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last Chapter: Part 5!  
> Only one week left until Harrow the Ninth! Woooo!
> 
> Thank you to everyone who read, kudosed and/or commented! Hope you guys enjoy the last chapter, we're ending this on a ridiculous note lol

In Gideon’s defense, _Escapades of the Upper Echelons_ was a completely legitimate-sounding title.

What Gideon had been trying to do was test out some new comics, selected from a catalogue that had come with her last shipment, to see if she could start following some new series. What Gideon had actually done was order a couple mid-tier comics and a porn mag.

The cover page for the _Third House Women Edition_ she’d ordered was actually pretty neutral. It was just a couple of beautiful women fully-clothed in excessively resplendent Third finery. Gideon had thought it was kind of weird that it was a lithograph, instead of a drawing, but she figured that the actual comic would be illustrated. When she’d first opened it up (alone in her cell, thank the Emperor) she’d taken one fraction of a second to look at the picture of a blonde Third woman in sheer golden lingerie biting her lip seductively before slapping it closed. She flung the magazine across her room for good measure and sat stiffly on her bed, resolutely looking anywhere else.

Her irrational fear that Crux or Harrow would come crawling out of the walls to judge her faded after a few minutes, unfounded. Gideon got up from her bed and approached the corner of her cell where the magazine had landed, slowly, like one would approach a large fanged beast.

Gideon stared at it in wary silence for a minute, deliberating. Then she lunged for the magazine and marched back to her bed, slapping it down on her blanket and pulling it open again.

She’d poured over the magazine for the next hour until she had to go do various menial tasks and train with Aiglamene. She was a live wire the rest of the day—every brush of her robes over her skin made her jump and each flash of light glinting off her sword brought to mind delicate jewelry draped over women’s near-naked bodies. Every time she was reminded of it, she’d glance around nervously, certain that everyone would know on sight what she’d done and what she was thinking about.

After she’d read it that first time, she’d hidden the magazine under her bed, never to be spoken of aloud to anyone ever, and vowed to herself that she would never make the mistake of buying another one.

Her resolve lasted right up until the next shuttle drop-off started to loom on the horizon. The only time they normally ordered items from the other Houses was when a shuttle came with their previous delivery. If Gideon didn’t order anything this drop-off, she’d have to wait until at least next month, a concept that became more and more unbearable the closer drop-off day got. Gideon’s thoughts revolved around the magazine under her bed and the magazine catalogue, which she had hidden with it due to guilt by association.

Gideon finally cracked the day before drop-off, and she was honestly impressed by her restraint. She had been locked in her cell as per usual, with drop-off looming, but nabbing Crux’s keys was practically a reflex at Gideon’s ripe old age. The grim bastard almost certainly wouldn’t notice until he was supposed to let her out again, so Gideon was basically free to do whatever she wanted as long as she kept a low profile. Not a particularly daunting prospect, given that ninety percent of the population on the Ninth had already lost most of their eyesight and the bulk of their cognitive ability to the ravages of time by now.

First, she needed to prepare. Gideon groped blindly under her bed until her fingers brushed the flimsy cover of the magazine and catalogue. She pulled them out, snapping the catalogue open for perusal before she could lose her nerve.

Now she could see where her error had been. _Escapades of the Upper Echelons_ had been under a section called 'Adult' which had made Gideon initially think that it was for more grown-up comics. Looking at the other titles in the section, Gideon came to the conclusion that past-Gideon was an idiot. How the hell had she missed titles like _Freaky Fifth House Hunks_ , _Third Threesomes_ , _Best Titties in All the Nine Houses_ , and _Sex Fiends of the Sixth_? There was even one called _Naughtiest Nuns of the Ninth_. Yikes.

After poring over the list, overwhelmed and red-faced and habitually checking over her shoulder for magically materializing nuns, Gideon eventually decided just to get another issue of _Escapades of the Upper Echelons_ — _Fourth House Women Edition_ this time—which seemed like a relatively safe bet. 

... And maybe one of the _Best Titties in All the Nine Houses_. Fuck it.

Decision made, Gideon jumped out of bed, broke out of her cell, and made her way to the docking bay to sneak her order in with the other requisition forms. She left her sword in her room, figuring she wouldn’t be out long enough for it to be likely that she’d run into anyone.

Avoiding people on the Ninth was usually painless, since there were so few of them. Also, their decaying joints creaked horribly when they walked so Gideon was warned well in advance when someone was approaching. 

She reached the docking bay without incident, and headed to the little office where the Ninth House stored all its order forms and logs. Someone had placed all the requisition forms for the next order neatly on top of the desk in plain view. How considerate.

Gideon had just slipped her form casually in the midst of the others when she was interrupted by the world’s most unpleasant sound.

“I must say, Griddle, even by your standards, this is a pathetic escape attempt.”

Harrow.

Of course the one time she got caught sneaking out was to order dirty magazines, instead of the dozens of times she’d gone for jogs around the leek fields or stolen nutrient paste from the food supplies like a respectable human being.

Gideon wheeled around and was greeted by the horrific sight of the Worst Person in the World. Harrow was draped in an excess of black cloth and white bone, small and cold and severe as ever, and her face, plastered with gobs of the awful thick skele-paint, was coolly mocking.

“Did you think that you could hide here unnoticed and slip onto the shuttle without anyone seeing you?” Harrow paused, her brain catching up on what Gideon had been doing when she walked in. “Or perhaps you came here to sneak in a requisition form for a shuttle. You do realize those need to be signed off on by either my parents or myself, correct?”

Harrow didn’t actually know what Gideon came there for, Gideon let out a breath, tension easing from her body. But then Harrow looked at the stack of forms with sinister intent, and Gideon tensed right back up. She wished she’d brought her damn sword.

“Of course not,” Gideon said belatedly. “Do you honestly think I’m dumb enough to expect that the delivery guy wouldn’t at least glance though the forms to make sure they’re completed?” Gideon frantically scanned the room for some magic excuse to get Harrow to just leave and protect Gideon’s magazine order and dignity.

“Do you really want me to answer that?” Harrow strode over to the stack of forms and rifled through them for Gideon’s. Gideon debated just throwing herself down the lift shaft to spare herself the horror of Harrow perusing a selection of porn titles.

Harrow paused on one of the sheets of flimsy. Gideon eyes were glued to the form, contemplating her impending doom. She didn’t know what to do with her hands.

Harrow was silent as she read the form over. Her face stilled into a mask of aggressive neutrality, but the skull paint blanched and then abruptly flushed with blood as Harrow realized what she was looking at.

And suddenly, everything was beautiful.

“Hah! Are you _embarrassed_ by the best titties in all the Nine Houses?” Gideon crowed, despite being equally as embarrassed by the best titties in all the Nine Houses. She pouted with faux sympathy and leaned in close. “Poor little baby Harrow’s never seen the word ‘titty’ before.”

Harrow scrunched her face up in affronted fury, and her hands squeezed the poor form. “Nav, you repulsive boor, how dare you sully the Ninth’s name by including this filth in with our House order forms? How dare you use Ninth House funds for this foul refuse?”

“Oh, relax, you drama queen.” Gideon rolled her eyes, back on more even footing at Harrow’s rage. “I’m sure all the Houses read this foul refuse. You have nothing to be upset about. I’m not trying to escape, so just let me place my damn order and you can go and pray in penitence and make yourself a bone chastity belt or whatever.”

Gideon grasped her form and tried to jerk it back, but Harrow irrationally clung onto it. Harrow was apparently too flustered to remember that she was a damn necromancer and could conjure a skeleton to knock Gideon on her swordless ass. Well, Gideon certainly wasn’t going to remind her. Gideon didn’t want to rip the flimsy, but she also didn’t want Harrow to tear it to shreds in front of her out of her own embarrassment. How could she get out of this while still getting to place her order?

And then Crux walked in.

Gideon and Harrow locked eyes, unified for once in frozen mortification at the prospect of Marshal goddamn Crux seeing an order form for pornographic magazines.

Seamlessly, Gideon released the order form and Harrow shoved it unceremoniously back into the pile of more legitimate forms. Maybe her order would be placed after all. Score one to Gideon. Assuming Crux didn’t murder her and get Harrow to turn her skeleton into his own personal slave.

“Good timing,” Harrow said to Crux, sounding remarkably normal. “Nav here was trying to escape again.”

Harrow was covering for her. Gideon subtly gaped at Harrow. She struggled to keep the emotions off her face—revulsion warring with a weird gratitude. This had to be the first time Harrow had ever done something even remotely on Gideon’s side. She genuinely could not believe that Harrow was actually covering for her, over dirty magazines, of all things.

While Gideon quietly lost her mind, Harrow was continuing, “Her master plan was to sneak in a shuttle request form and ‘hide’ it among our other orders. I’ve dealt with her forms, and I’d like you to mete out her punishment. Have fun, be creative.”

What a _piece of absolute garbage_.

And, just like that, the status quo resumed. Of course Harrow would cover for her by getting her into more trouble. Actually, she wasn’t even covering for _Gideon_ , she was covering for herself. If the nuns found out she knew the word ‘titty’ they’d all simultaneously have an aneurysm, and then where would the census be?

Crux, horrendously gleeful at the prospect of violence, eagerly launched himself over to Gideon and began to drag her away, yelling at her for being a burden to the House and a menace to society and everything wrong with the whole Nine Houses. Stupidly unarmed for what was supposed to be a stealth mission, Gideon didn’t really have much of a choice but to go with him. Harrow, eyebrow arched and lips pursed, remained behind, probably to actually destroy Gideon’s order form. She was unsatisfyingly immune to Gideon’s death glare.

Next month, Gideon woke up bright and early and promptly nearly killed herself slipping on something on the ground as she tried to leave her cell. Someone had placed a small package directly in front of her cell door.

There was a note stuck to the top of it, written in Harrow’s hand and Harrow’s blood:

Under absolutely no circumstances are you to pull this stunt again. Enjoy your filth, you mentally deficient barbarian.

With a wide grin and only slightly flushed cheeks, Gideon ripped open the package and wheeled around back into her cell, pulling out her brand new, shiny filth.

Maybe she’d drop them in front of Harrow’s door after she was done with them, as thanks.


End file.
